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Author's Notes

This chapter and its newly introduced characters are a tribute to:

Kurt Gebhard von Hammerstein-Equord: Commander-in-Chief of the Reichswehr 1930-1934, who tried his best to stop Hitler's coming to power and failed numerous times to lure the dictator in for assassination. He died of cancer during the war and his family were sent to concentration camps for their participation in the German Resistance (thankfully, they survived).

Wilhelm Canaris & Hans Oster: Leaders of the German military intelligence Abwehr, sabotaging Nazi war efforts since 1938. Both were executed during the purge after the July 20th assassination (1944) against Hitler.

7th Panzer 'Ghost Division': Erwin Rommel is among the last of his kind, a general as chivalrous as he is brilliant, who not only ignored maniacal orders but even buried his fallen foes with honors. He was forced to commit suicide after partaking in the July 20th plot.

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing. -- Albert Einstein"

Amongst reasons I selected the Prussia-themed Weichsel as the protagonist nation is due to the glory of Prussian arms, an army matched by few others in courage, insight, and staunch discipline. Furthermore, its strong traditions gave responsibility and purpose to a commendable aristocracy (a rarity in its time). It is a shame to history eternal that their successor -- the German army -- became so corrupted in the wake of Germany's humiliating defeat after WWI, much of it caused by the Entente's harsh demands for "Victor's Justice". Due of this tarnish, Prussian culture is rarely noted positively in modern culture, as inevitable blames of 'Nazi glorification' often followed.

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[on the board...]

There is however, still a wide belief that any general who fought for the Reich was in the wrong. Unfortunately, worldly decisions are not so black and white. The following is an excerpt from Werner Heisenberg (fictional) in Copenhagen, when discussing with Niels Bohr on his decision to lead the Nazi nuclear program:

"I'm the one who has to decide! If the Allies are building a bomb, what am I choosing for my country? ...It would another easy mistake to make, to think that one loved one's country less because it happened to be in the wrong. Germany is where I was born. Germany is where I became what I am. Germany is all the faces of my childhood, all the hands that picked me up when I fell, all the voices that encouraged me and set me on my way, all the hearts that speak to my heart. Germany is my widowed mother and my impossible brother. Germany is my wife. Germany is our children. I have to know what I'm deciding for them! Is it another defeat? Another nightmare like the nightmare I grew up with? Bohr, my childhood in Munich came to an end in anarchy and civil war. Are more children going to starve, as we did? Are they going to have to spend winter nights as I did when I was a schoolboy, crawling on my hands and knees through the enemy lines, creeping out into the country under cover of darkness in the snow to find food for my family?... On the evening of Hiroshima, Oppenheimer said it was his one regret. That they didn't produce the bomb in time to use on Germany... You weren't dropping it on Hitler, either. You were dropping it on anyone who was in reach. On old men and women in the street, on mothers and their children. And if you'd produced it in time they would have been my fellow-countrymen. My wife. My children. That was the intention. Yes?"

In a way, those words rang true. Upon Germany's defeat, the US implemented Morgenthau Plan/JCS1067 which attempted to economically 'liquidate' Germany during the years of 1944-47. Conditions worsened so much by 1947 that Herbert Hoover asserted their rations were hardly more than the amount given in Nazi concentration camps. Thankfully, sanity soon prevailed and the history of interwar Germany did not repeat itself a second time.